By Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit Blog

As noted before, climateaudit readers have helped UCAR find the lost civilization of Chile and today, we are happy to report that we have helped NASA find the lost city of Wellington NZ. NASA’s records for Wellington NZ were mysteriously interrupted in 1988 - an interruption so severe that we assumed that Wellington NZ must have been destroyed by Scythians. We are happy to report that Wellington NZ is still in existence.

This is not the only good news. We are also happy to announce that there is still a functioning meteorological service. Not only that, but can announce contact with the indigenous representatives. Although NASA (and NOAA) appear to have lost contact, an indigenous NZ climate scientist familiar with the lost records has contacted climateaudit. I have passed this exciting news on to NASA and urged them to restore contact with their lost cousins in NZ. Previously, we had shown the following graphic showing the termination of NASA records in 1988 and the adding of a substantial trend to the Wellington NZ record in the Hansen adjustment.

If one is allowing for urbanization in Wellington for the period since 1928 (presuming a non-homogeneity at 1928) to the present, then there is no physical theory under which the adjustment should reduce earlier measurements as Hansen has done. Exactly how Hansen’s algorithm effected this reduction still remains somewhat of a mystery (which we are working on). Whether this particular Hansen error, whatever it is, creates an overall bias also remains to be determined. But the adjustment makes no sense in this particular instance, so there is obviously something wrong somewhere. See the blog here.